Obituary: Phil Grignon, pioneering South County educator

A generation of high school students who ventured outside the classroom to explore the sea environment off south Orange County four decades ago will remember Phil Grignon as teacher, principal and champion of the California gray whale.

Old-timers in San Clemente will remember him for the marine-science curriculum he built and his role in launching the area's first whale-watching cruises off the San Clemente Pier. In Dana Point, Grignon is remembered for helping to start Dana Hills High School and the Festival of Whales.

He died Oct. 3 in San Diego at age 82, leaving a legacy that also included helping establish the Marine Studies Institute in Dana Point in the 1970s. It's now the Ocean Institute.

"We lost an Orange County icon," said Marv Sherrill, a retired educator who worked with Grignon at San Clemente High School and years later, at Dana Hills, ran the marine-ecology and Baja field studies programs that Grignon had pioneered both at SCHS and DHHS. "He touched many people in southern Orange County," Sherrill said.

Don Hansen, owner of Dana Wharf Sportfishing & Whale Watching, owned San Clemente Sportfishing in the 1960s as Dana Point Harbor was being conceived and built. Grignon approached Hansen about putting his fishing boats to alternate use for whale trips off the San Clemente Pier during gray whales' migration season. Grignon's marine-science students at San Clemente High would help.

"It was his idea," Hansen said, "and we had the boats, so we started whale watching. He was very instrumental, with his students, to get the California gray whale listed as endangered."

Pete Hadley of San Juan Capistrano remembered Grignon this week as "a very adventurous man ... fearless in whatever he wanted to do."

Grignon was Hadley's teacher in the eighth grade at Heinz Kaiser Junior High School in Costa Mesa, where Hadley looked up to him as a teacher who surfed. Years later, when Hadley's son attended Dana Hills High and went on a Baja field study that Grignon had introduced to the school long before, the group ran into Grignon, who had a house in Baja. "He wound up selling me his Baja place," Hadley said.

Born Feb. 5, 1930, in New York City, Grignon was a Korean War veteran and a Marine Corps judo champion, his family said in his obituary. Earning an assortment of degrees at Cal State Long Beach and Pepperdine University, Grignon served as a visiting professor at Harvard University.

He began to make his mark on Orange County at San Clemente High School in the 1960s. As chairman of the science department, Grignon wrote a K-12 curriculum based on the ocean and the gray whale, Sherrill recalled.

Grignon moved from San Clemente High to Dana Hills when it opened in 1973, becoming Dana Hills' principal and then assistant superintendent of the Capistrano Unified School District. He went on to serve as superintendent of the Carlsbad Unified School District and the South Bay Union School District in Imperial Beach. He lived there his last 29 years, his family said, "an extraordinary father, an unforgettable friend and so much more to many others."

Sherrill remembered how marine-ecology students at Dana Hills, under Grignon's wing, signed a petition asking the governor to designate the gray whale as California's state mammal, and the governor, Jerry Brown, now the current governor, said yes.

"He loved to challenge," Sherrill said, "and he didn't back down until he had overcome whatever barriers were put in front of him. He would never accept it couldn't be done."

The family said a funeral service with military honors is set for 1 p.m. Oct. 25 at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation at mcsf.org.

Phil Grignon and his wife, Anne. COURTESY OF GRIGNON FAMILY
Phil Grignon pauses beside his plane at Scammon's Lagoon, Baja California, a favorite place for viewing migrating California gray whales. COURTESY OF MARV SHERRILL
Phil Grignon and his wife Anne are pictured with their grandson Phil, Jr., at Bahia de los Angeles, Baja California, in the 1990s. COURTESY OF MARV SHERRILL

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